Rosa Parks & MLK:

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her childhood was filled with the injustice of segregation and racial prejudice. Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone." It was a lifetime of injustice that led to her decision to not give up her seat that day on the bus. She married Raymond Parks & they both worked quietly to effect change. God was at the core of all her beliefs. She served the NAACP as Youth Advisor & started a foundation with a special program for youth. After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. In 1995, she published her autobiography titled Quiet Strength that discussed how her faith kept her strong. She died in 2005 at the age of 92 .